Pizza products generally include a crust layer topped with a sauce layer, a cheese layer, and often any assortment of other exposed ingredients generally described as ‘toppings’. Other pizza products can also include a second upper crust layer. Examples of these double-crusted pizzas can include calzones, Stromboli and stuffed pizza products.
Known double-crusted pizza products join the peripheral edge of the overlapping crusts to form a continuous crust (pocket) structure to secure the upper crust to the remainder of the pizza and to maintain the ingredients within the pocket.
It is desirable though, in some instances, for consumers to view the ingredients within a double-crusted pizza product to, for example, determine ingredient type, quality and quantity without the need to read descriptions on product packaging. Attempts to achieve this, such as using a lattice arrangement of openings on an upper crust, can pose design challenges. The lattice arrangement may appear to consumers to more closely resemble a pie crust than a pizza crust. Additionally, such openings only allow consumers to view the upper layer of ingredients. Consumers may also not be able to determine the quantity of ingredients just by viewing the upper surface. Finally, in some situations, openings in the upper crust may be undesirable for a multi-piece pizza product. For instance, if the pizza product is cut into several pieces, some pieces may have only a small amount of upper crust. Additionally, continuous crust (pocket) type products are often desirable to consumers to allow holding the product without touching the messier pizza ingredients, such as the meat, cheese and sauce.